In conventional sheet counters for automatically counting a number of sheets such as bank notes, the structure of the comparator circuit included in the counter is relatively complex; furthermore conventional sheet counters suffer from the problem of time delay which is caused by the figure place shifting operation of a counter and by the operations of the elements composing the counter and a comparator, that is, the operations of the counter and the comparator with respect to a unit counting input become different in time, as a result noise signals are produced in addition to the necessary signals present in conventional sheet counters thereby causing erroneous operation thereof.